shadow lab

I’m grinding Shadow lab for the lower city rep (I want the shiny mace). It’s beginning to be frustrating. Not least because now that I’ve respecced shadow, everyone wants a healer.

Last night was an example. With some trepidation, I agreed to heal a party for shadow lab. I agreed because I looked at what we had and thought it should be an easy fight. Alas, it was not to be.

In fact, we wiped – three times – on Hellmaw.

Ambassador Hellmaw is not a big deal. Approximately 125,000 hit points, AoE fear every 30 seconds, corrosive acid spray. When he fears, he then attacks the person who has generated the most threat who is not feared.

If you’re a healer and you’re at long range while everyone else is close, that’s probably you. If you’re closer because the tank is fury spec and dancing him instead of keeping him in one position, you get feared too and it’s your warlock who dies.

That was the consistent pattern. By the end of four fears the process of wiping had begun. Part of it was me – I missed a couple of heals. But part of it…

At point of wipe – that’s two minutes – Hellmaw was never below 40%. In other words, the combined dps for the party did approximately 72,000 points of damage over 120 seconds for a nominal 600 dps.

600 dps. We had a warlock (demonology) and two hunters (both marksman), and the tank was fury spec who spent over half the battle in berserker, and we did a fricking. 600. dps.

Every single member of the party – to include myself – should have been able to do that. Heck, if they’d done my “poor job” 300 dps we’d have doubled the rate and killed him.

Gutcheck. If Hellmaw hasn’t died before he casts the third fear, your party is not ready for Shadow Labyrinth.

The tank has to tank – and he did. The healer has to heal the tank – and I kept him alive through the first three fears in every battle. The DPS crew has to dps. And they were not so good at that. And so we wiped three times.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.